Pressemitteilungen

The picture shows a younger gentleman in three-quarter profile, who, with his hair combed straight back, a lens in his right eye, a white collar, tie and dark jacket, gives off a strict and elegant appearance. It is the artist Evarist Adam Weber (1887–1968), usually known as E.A. Weber signed. He was active as a painter, graphic artist and craftsman. His expressionist woodcuts and his motorsport paintings are particularly well known.

Evarist Adam Weber – Expressionism and Motorsport

Weber was born in Aachen in 1887, but later lived primarily in Bavaria, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Munich and on Lake Ammersee. After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, he began his career with impressionist landscape paintings under the influence of Cezanne. He later turned to expressionism and created numerous series of woodcuts, which he showed as a member of the “Das Junge Rheinland” association and at exhibitions in Bavaria and Austria.
Graphics, drawings and paintings by Evarist Adam Weber tended in a more objective direction in the 1920s; he increasingly combined expressionist forms with the motifs of New Objectivity. A special feature is his enthusiasm for modern sports; he was a passionate motorcyclist and also worked artistically with motorsport motifs. This resulted in not only numerous paintings and graphics with corresponding motifs, but also bronze plaques. The turn to handicrafts increased at the end of the 1920s. In 1931 he founded the Kunsthandwerkliche Werkstätten Weber-Heubach together with his second wife Gertraud Heubach (1895–1962). In the years that followed, they were regularly part of the renowned Leipzig Grassi fairs with their leather and textile work, jewelry and carved glasses.

Hugo Erfurth’s portrait photograph of Evarist Adam Weber was taken in 1919 on the occasion of a trip to Dresden.

Erfurth had his photo studio there at Zinzendorfstrasse 11, in the former Palais Lüttichau, since 1906 until he moved to Cologne in 1934. The picture is signed lower right and dated in an incision on the plate in front of the print: “Hugo Erfurth 1919”. The print is mounted on handmade paper that bears Erfurth’s blind-embossed studio stamp at the bottom right. The photography is probably a bromine oil pigment print, a technique that Hugo Erfurth liked to use and with which he produced high-quality unique pieces.

Hugo Erfurth is rightly regarded as one of the most important portrait photographers of his time. The loan from Torsten Bröhan shows an early portrait of the artist Evarist Adam Weber

After his apprenticeship with the Dresden court photographer Wilhelm Höffert, he took over the J. S. Schröder studio in Dresden’s Johannstadt in 1896. In 1906 he acquired the Palais Lüttichau in Dresden’s Pirnaische Vorstadt and set up his own studio there. Until 1914 he was also commissioned to teach photography at the Leipzig Royal Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Industry. His studio, which he opened in 1934 when he moved to Cologne, was destroyed in the bombing of the city in 1942. Hugo Erfurth settled on Lake Constance after the Second World War and died there in 1948.

A catalog book was published for the exhibition:

Ina Ewers-Schultz, Klara Denker-Nagels, Walter Lehnert (Hrsg.): Evarist Adam Weber. Wiederentdeckt. Zwischen Expressionismus und Neuer Sachlichkeit, zwischen freier und angewandter Kunst. Museum August Macke Haus, Bonn 2022. (ISBN 978-3-942423-11-3)

Evarist Adam Weber. Wiederentdeckt. – Zwischen Expressionismus und neuer Sachlichkeit, zwischen freier und angewandter Kunst

December 1, 2022 – May, 25, 2023